Countess Constance Markievicz

Countess Constance Georgina Markievicz [née Gore-Booth]
(1868-1927), revolutionary and politician; born at 7 Buckingham Gate, London,
on 4 February 1868. Her father, the philanthropist Henry Gore-Booth, was also
an Arctic explorer and a landlord in the west of Ireland, and was married to
Georgina May Hill, of Tickhill Castle, York. Constance was educated by a governess
at Lissadell, Co. Sligo where the family held extensive estates. She was the
eldest of three daughters and two sons and her sister, Eva Gore-Booth would
later become a campaigner for women’s suffrage. In the monarch jubilee
year of 1887 she was presented at court to Queen Victoria and was called ‘the
new Irish beauty’, and took her place in society as a member of the Anglo-Irish
aristocracy. She was also noted as a fine horsewoman, and as an excellent shot.
William Butler Yeats was a frequent guest at Lissadell. After listening to his
stories of Irish myths and folklore and to his passionate political ideas, she
was stirred to action. At that time women were not allowed to vote in elections
or to become Members of Parliament. Markievicz decided to join the suffragettes
who were fighting for women’s rights. Around this time she joined the
National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, a cause she was to remain
devoted to throughout her life.

In 1893 she moved to London to study at the Slade School of
Art in London. In 1898 she moved to Paris where she continued to study art at
the Julian School. While there she met and later married fellow artist and Count
Casimir Dunin-Markievicz. The Polish widower’s family owned a large estate
in Ukraine. After travelling abroad, they returned to Sligo where their daughter
Maeve was born in 1901. Maeve was raised by her grandparents. In 1903 Markievicz
moved to Dublin where she began to make a name for herself as a landscape artist.
Dublin was a vibrant city at the time, a centre for artists, actors, writers
and politicians. Markievicz was attracted to the Gaelic League and the Abbey
Theatre. She helped to found the United Arts Club in 1907, which helped bring
together people of the artistic renaissance. Markievicz expressed her dissatisfaction
with this kind of life ‘nature should provide me with something to live
for, something to die for’. In 1906 she rented a cottage at Ballally,
Co. Dublin, and came across a number of old copies of the revolutionary publications
the Peasant and Sinn Féin left by a previous tenant,
the poet Pádraig Colum. After reading these, Markievicz knew she had
found a cause to inspire her life. Her interest in the struggle for freedom
was aroused.

Markievicz became active in nationalist politics and her aim
was to make Ireland an independent nation. In 1908 she joined Sinn Féin
and Maud Gonne’s women group, Inghinidhe na hÉireann (Daughters
of Ireland). She also became a regular contributor to Bean na hÉireann
(Women of Ireland), Ireland’s first women’s nationalist journal
and the United Irishman. She went to Manchester in 1908 and stood unsuccessfully
for election with her sister Eva, who was deeply involved in social reform.
At the suggestion of Bulmer Hobson, she founded Na Fianna Éireann
(1909), an organisation for boys, who were taught to drill and use arms. The
movement aimed to establish an independent Ireland and also to promote the Irish
language.

In 1911 Markievicz was arrested when she took part in a demonstration
against the visit of King George V to Ireland. She worked closely with James
Connolly who fought for Irish nationalism and social equality. She ran a soup
kitchen in Liberty Hall during the 1913 Dublin lockout. Markievicz then joined
the Irish Citizens Army. She had separated from her husband about 1909 and later
worked as a war correspondent in the Balkans. She was strongly opposed to Irish
involvement in the Great War and co-founded the Irish Neutrality League in 1914.
During the 1916 Rising Markievicz was appointed second in command to Michael
Mallin at St. Stephen’s Green. Although condemned to death when the rising
was crushed, she had her sentence commuted to penal servitude for life (on account
of her sex) and was imprisoned in Aylesbury Jail. Under the general amnesty
of 1917, Markievicz was released and immediately became a convert to Catholicism—she
claimed to have experienced an epiphany during the rising. In August 1917 she
was made a freeman of Sligo. She was made honorary president of the Irish Women
Workers’s Union.

In 1918 she was again arrested by the British during their
bogus ‘German Plot’, which was aimed at defeating the anti-conscription
forces in Ireland. While in prison, she was returned in the general election
of December 1918 for St. Patrick’s division of Dublin. Markievicz became
the first woman to be elected to the British Parliament, but in accordance with
Sinn Féin policy she did not take her seat. She refused to take the oath
of allegiance to the King. She was a member of the first Dáil Éireann,
which met on the 21 January 1919, and was appointed Minister for Labour. She
was arrested in the summer of 1919 for making a seditious speech, and was sentenced
to four months’ hard labour. After being arrested again in 1920 she received
a sentence of two years’ hard labour.

She denounced the Anglo-Irish treaty of 1921, which established
the Irish Free State within the British Commonwealth, in the Dáil after
being released from prison early under the general amnesty that followed its
signing. She toured America in 1922 to enlist support for the Republican cause.
She stated:

‘It is the capitalist interests in England and Ireland
that are pushing this Treaty to block the march of the working people in England
and Ireland ... Now I say that Ireland’s freedom is worth blood, and
worth my blood, and I will willingly give it for it, and I appeal to the men
of the Dáil to stand true’.

She was also leader of Cumann na mBan. An opponent
of the Irish Free State, she supported the ‘Irregulars’ during the
Civil War, for which she was imprisoned. She was released soon after she went
on hunger strike in protest. In the general election of 1923 she was elected
as Sinn Féin abstentionist TD for Dublin City South. When de Valera formed
Fianna Fáil in 1926 Markievicz became a member. During the general election
of 1927 she conducted her own campaign and was re-elected to the Dáil.
For some years her health was failing, and she died in a public ward in Sir
Patrick Dun’s Hospital, Dublin on 15 July 1927. The working-class people
of Dublin lined the streets of Dublin for her funeral. Eamonn de Valera was
one of the pall-bearers. She is commemorated by a limestone bust in St. Stephen’s
Green, by a plaque in St. Ultan’s Hospital and by the Yeats’s poem
‘In memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Constance Markievicz’. She is buried
in Glasnevin Cemetery, Co. Dublin.